Flaws with Subjective Morality

Do you believe that morals as subjective. This page is a collection of reasons why morals can not be subjective, and instead there is an objective basis to morality.

Examples

By claiming that morals are subjective you are saying that if you believe an action is good, then it actually is good. That is, the goodness of an action depends entirely on the subjective opinion of people.

Consider the action of blood letting. This procedure was widely thought to be good a few hundred years ago. But believing that it is good, does not make it good. No matter how strong the agreement is that bloodletting is good, it remains objectively bad BECAUSE it harms the culture that hosts this belief. People die who otherwise would not need to die, and that harms everyone -- not just the person who died.

Consider cannibals. Tribes that engaged in cannibalism obvious thought it was a right and good action. They subjectively agreed that it was good. But does that make it good? Actually, cannibals are subject to debilitating diseases, and cannibal cultures tend to wither and die. Not just because advanced cultures dislike cannibalism, but because cannibalism is inherently, objectively bad for the cannibals.

How can you justify the idea that an action is "good" simply because everyone agrees that it is good.

I say instead there is an objective measure of all actions that is independent of anybody's opinion.

Including context

but there are plenty of such examples where individuals believe same right dont belong to over races for example. I disagree with them. prime example of morality not being universal.

A lot of times people have a hard time recognizing what is and is not an "action". We want nice simple guidelines like "lighting fires is bad". There is a simple, clearly defined action: lighting fires.

Can we say simply that lighting fires is good? Can we say is it bad?

Lighting a fire in a fireplace in a cold house with people suffering from hypothermia is probably a good thing.

Lighting a fire on a full airplane while flying is probably a very bad thing.

We can't just talk about the morality of "lighting a fire" without including the CONTEXT. To make this universal, we have to include all the conditions: "lighting a fire is good when people need warmth and it is done in a safe way that will not harm people, or when you need to cook food in a safe way, but not when in a pressurized airplane in flight with limited air for people to breath, in a submerged submarine, or in a house with a gas leak, or when close to a car being refueled, etc."

The real moral has to include all the context to become universal, because the simplistic form is just too simple.

But races? I can see how moral behavior in the tropics would be different from moral behavior in the arctic because their situation is so different, but I believe if you transported people from the tropics to the arctic, the arctic rules would still apply, no matter what race they were.

When you speak of moral differences between races, are you really just talking about differences in their situation?